Obrienp

G4M have just knocked a few quid off it and they have sunburst lefties in stock.

For a bit of balance, not everyone likes the Hartwood Satellite. I have to admit the sound is probably a bit marmite but then he seems to have only tried it with the horrible OEM strings:

Link to my NBD report on the Hartwood Satellite:

This is a slightly delayed new bass day report on the Hartwood Satellite bass. Hartwood is a new house brand of Gear 4 Music. Here is a link to their website for the colour I have gone for: https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-Bass/Hartwood-Satellite-Bass-Guitar-Metallic-Blue/6TIG. However, some of the specs are incorrect, so I will correct them below. This is a medium scale (32”) budget bass. It comes in at just under £200, so I guess the nearest competition is the Squier Affinity Jaguar HB, which comes in at about £40 more. They have quite a lot in common in that they are both single pickup basses with jazz style necks and offset bodies. On the whole I feel the Hartwood is slightly better made (based on my memory of owning the Jag). The best feature of the Satellite is the neck: claimed to be roasted maple. It might be but it has clearly been stained to emphasise the toffee colour, so the jury is out on that. It was carved from a single billet, rather than having a scarf joint at the headstock. Time will tell if this is susceptible to cracking if bashed but it seems pretty strong at the moment. The frets on my example are really well finished but quite shallow. There are no sprouting, or high frets and they are cut a little back from the edge of the fretboard, so it was easy to roll the edges by running a sanding block along them. That is not to say that it was sharp or rough to start off but I prefer the feel of rolled edges. The fretboard wood is laurel which seems a bit softer than rosewood and it was quite dry but was easily revived with some lemon oil. The nut, which is 38mm (not 40mm as claimed in the specs) was a bit too high and not that well cut. Easily remedied as well. Really nice touches are the fretboard markers that roll round to the edge of the board, so can be seen easily from above and the wheel truss rod adjustment at the heel. An adjustment bar comes with the bass and the correct size Allen key for the saddles. Sticking with the neck, the headstock is reminiscent of the the Sire shape but smaller and not as fuggly. It looks pretty good IMO. The machine heads look like standard pattern vintage Fenderish items in the photo on the website but in reality are tiny (see photo below). The shafts are just under 10mm and the baseplates only 35mm long, even smaller than the smallest Gotoh Resolites. It may be difficult to find replacements that drop in but that said, they seem pretty robust, operate smoothly and seem to hold their tuning. They can’t be heavy either, which must contribute to the reasonably good balance on a strap. The body is an interesting shape. A bit like an extended, offset Tele. It has the weirdest shaped scratchplate but it grows on you and does fit the vibe of the bass, which is a bit 60s throwback. It is quite a big body, which also contributes to the balance. I haven’t weighed it but the website claims the average weight is 3.75kg, which seems about right. It’s not as light as say a Nordstrand Acinonyx but not a boat anchor. I don’t think it would cause much discomfort on a long gig and unlike a lot of shorter scale basses, it has decent body contours for both belly and forearm. On the back the neck is retained by 4 individual screws (a bit more upmarket than the standard 4 screw plate) and the lower edge is cut away a bit to give better access to the upper frets. The Precision bass style pickup is set quite close to the neck (more about the sound anon) and has simple P style controls of vol and tone. The jack socket is mounted on an oval plate on the side of the lower bout, like a Tele, or 51 Precision bass. The bridge is BBOT style but is more substantial than some I have seen on cheap offerings. It has rudimentary grooves in the baseplate to keep the saddles pointing in the right direction. Spacing is 20mm. I took the Satellite to a blues jam the evening it arrived (but after fixing the nut, neck relief and intonation). It seemed to sound pretty precision like through the house rig (Ashdown ABM 600 EVO head and a custom made 2 x 10 cab). At home I played it through my FRFR rig of Markbass LMIII and LFSys Monza, which really gives you a pretty uncoloured reproduction of the sound of the bass. I found it a little disappointing with EQ set at equality. A bit too clanky and low mid focused and a little lacking in outright lows on the E string. This seemed counterintuitive given the placement of the pickup up but at least it wasn’t muddy and indistinct. This was probably largely due to the OEM strings which are pretty horrible. Very rough feeling and incidentally 45-100, not 40-95 as claimed in the spec. It was also very noisy with hands off the strings. I always expect to change the strings on cheap basses and normally change the pickup and electrics as well. I also prefer the look of higher mass bridges (even if the jury is out on how it changes tone). Consequently I set about putting a Tone Rider Duke in it with CTS pots and a Pure Tone jack socket. It was harder to find a cheap drop in replacement bridge because of the two front, two back retaining screw pattern. I eventually found something for about £14 which is a bit beefier and had the 4 retaining screw pattern. It would have been much easier if Hartwood had used the ubiquitous 5 hole Fender pattern. On opening the thing up I discovered why it was so noisy: no shielding at all, apart from a bit of tin foil under the pots (see photo). This is pretty much what I have found with the Squier Jaguar, Ibanez Talman etc. Graphite paint would obviously break the budget! Anyway easily cured with copper tape. It’s now as quiet as a church mouse. The control cavity is massive, so no problem fitting in full sized CTS pots (unlike the Squier Jag that barely takes mini-pots). In fact you could easily fit an active pre-amp and battery in, should you want to. Pot spacing seems to be pretty standard Precision bass pattern, so you could use a pre-wired harness, if you don’t want to solder yourself but you will need to have a long wire run to the jack and be prepared to solder that yourself (because of the placement). An indication of the speed of assembly came when I changed the bridge. The original retaining screws had been forced in at an angle. Obviously not pre-drilled because the finish was chipped off around the holes. I had to fill the holes and drill them straight to get the replacement bridge to align properly. These things are made to a price and I guess a lot of the budget had gone into the quality of the neck and body. Now that I have done these mods the bass sounds really good. It’s like a Precision with a bit more bottom and top. It has plenty of punch and definition. TBH I reckon I could have got a lot of this just from changing the strings to something decent. I have put D’Addario nickel rounds 45-100 on it but I think it would work really well with some chrome flats as well. I don’t regret changing the pickups, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary. The OEMs look pretty cheap: bar magnets fixed along the bottom, instead of magnetised pole pieces. Tone Rider Dukes (or SP1 Classic) are only £35 and punch well above their price point, so almost a no-brainier upgrade for cheap Precision style basses. Conclusion after all this waffle: a very nice playable and good value addition to the medium scale market. The neck could be off a much more expensive instrument and the body shape is interesting. It balances pretty well and it’s not too heavy. Change the strings for something decent and it sounds pretty good OEM. Spend £35 on a Tone Rider pickup and it sounds excellent. Incidentally, G4M do a Hartwood full size gig bag for £30, which the Satellite fits into pretty well. The body is quite long, so there isn’t a huge amount of bag flopping around above the headstock and it has a neck retainer pad and strap, plus pretty thick padding. Finished article with replacement chunkier bridge.

Pure Tone are great and that’s what I meant. For some reason I keep calling them True Tone. I only opened a packet the other day, doh!

Well, a Tone Rider SP1 (classic) , or the SP2 (Duke) P pickup set, depending on what I am after tonally. After that CTS, or Alpha full sized 250 K pots (if they will fit in the cavity), a decent 0.047uf capacitor (TBH Mylar is fine but orange drop if you must) and Pure Tone jack socket. If the cavity is too tight for full sized, Alpha mini-pots are a good alternative. I wire it up with cloth covered wire, simply because it is easier to work with. Sticky backed copper tape to shield the cavities and the back of the pickguard. Remember to have a bit of overlap from cavity to the top so that you get continuity with the shielding on the back of the pickguard. Job done😀.

Well, I feel I am just chucking this out into the ether but I finally got round to doing the modifications to the Acinonyx that I described in my last post. It turned out to be quite challenging for me and Tony (the luthier) but it is finally done. Yeh! The challenge for Tony was getting hold of blanks large enough to accommodate the Acinonyx scratchplate in one piece. It took a couple of passes on the CNC machine because a bit slipped and caused a gouge in one plate. Prior to that there had been a scaling issue with the CAD/CAM software that caused a perfect but scaled down version of the scratchplate to be cut: about 90% of the full sized plate. 4 blanks later we finally got the finished plate but in a slightly thinner material, although still 3ply. It took me quite a long time to get round to wiring it up and at that point I discovered that the control cavity wasn’t quite deep enough to accommodate the depth of the Oak-Grigsby 4 position Tele switch, or the varitone. Eek! The original cavity is 30mm deep and the body is 40mm thick. I needed about 3mm more depth but I also had to allow for a layer of copper tape shielding, plus insulating tape on top of that to prevent the possibility of anything shorting out in contact with the shielding. I very carefully created a 5mm trench along the centre of the control cavity with a very sharp chisel. One slip and I could have gone through the back. Fortunately I didn’t and there is no give in the back: phew! I slo had to scallop some of the bracing in the body route to accommodate the edge of the volume pot. Again a sharp chisel and a steady hand required. Once that was done I was able to squeeze everything into the control cavity and screw the plate down flush with the top. The first time round squeezing all the wiring in caused a wire to come away and only the front pickup to work but after re-soldering, I was more careful second time round. Anyway the final article is below. I think the perl plate looks much better than the original. The chicken head knob is for the varitone switch that has 6 positions ranging from 0.010 to 0.1 uf. I am toying with the idea of putting the OEM chicken head knob back on the volume control. I am also considering making up a circular plate to go round the varitone with position markings on it. I would use one of the prototype plates for the material. The Tele switch has 4 positions: 1 bridge pickup, 2 both pickups in parallel, 3 neck pickup, 4 both pickups in series (“all-in”). I am pleased with finished article: it is much easier to get the “all-in” setting than messing with the original buttons. The varitone has more tone variations than the original buttons and they are easier to select. There are no buttons in the way of my picking arm. If anybody is interested in getting a custom plate, now the outline has been digitised, Tony can do one to your specs. https://tonyedwardsguitars.co.uk.

Great that you are happy with the sound and tonal options. The first thing I did with Squiers in the past was replace all the electronics: pickups, pots, capacitor, jack socket and shield the cavities with copper tape. Good that they have improved in that area. Of course, I would still do it but that is because I like tinkering and for £35 Tone Rider SP1, or2 blows everything else out of the water. 😀

If that video is anything to go by, they are definitely trying to move away from their Radio 2 image! Seriously though, apart from a JMJ, using a pick and Fender Bassman gear, it is hard to tell from that what is going on in his signal chain. The camera rarely lands on the bass player, let alone their pedal board. Guessing is fun but why don’t you message them on instagram, or TikTok to ask? P.S. For people as old as me: remember when you used to be able to write to Melody Maker to ask stuff like this and they would get onto the artist/band’s management?

Are they still in business? They seem to come and go, moving production around. Wasn’t it meant to be coming back to the UK? Perhaps that is why there is a 12 week delivery time. I imagine that is going to be quite heavy given the neck through design but always good to have another medium scale on the block. This one is serious money though, so I would definitely want to try it before buying.

I am so tempted to buy another Chinese neck of fleaBay but at the moment I can’t play due to bursitis in my left elbow, so I am putting it off to see if I recover. I turn 70 shortly so recovery is not a given: arthritis seems to be getting its claws into me. If/when I am ready to jump, it’s going to be a fretless jazz. Bizarrely these seem to sell for about £20 more than the fretted ones, so it would be somewhere around £110. Prior to the bursitis, I had been enjoying playing my Sire U5 fretless shortie and was wondering whether I could manage a full scale fretless but didn’t want to lash out on a new bass (like a Sire P7). I have a couple of bitsas I have put together, so one would provide the body. I have to say that putting these basses together is very addictive and with the quality of these “cheap” necks, it can be done for less than the price of a Squier Affinity but with much better hardware. Is this an addiction?

Personally, if I could only keep one, I would keep the U5. I had the Jaguar SS a few years back and I don’t recall it being as well made and I also recall the Jag being a real neck diver but I might be confusing it with the 32” humbucker version I also owned for a while. I love the rolled edges on the U5 neck, the flamed maple top (unless you have the green one), the lack of hum and the serrated saddles. I guess in the Jag’s favour: it is easier to upgrade things like the bridge and machine heads (standard Fender pattern) and it has more conventional contouring (belly and arm cuts). However, the U5 is the first “cheap” bass that I have not felt the need to upgrade. The bridge pickup could be stronger but I remember the Jag’s being even more pathetic and the P not being that great either. Each to their own though. It will be interesting to hear where you land. BTW what’s wrong with having two shorties?

I’ve been very happy with mine and I haven’t found the forearm thing too bad. There is a bit of a contour at the back edge but not enough. I have found stick on foam edging works on other basses with edge binding. The sort of stuff made to make furniture edges safe for toddlers. It would mess up the look of the Sire but might be worth a try, if you find the binding too uncomfortable.

Surprised by that. Can’t say I have experienced lack of bottom end on a Jazz, compared to say a Precision. Maybe I have been lucky with mine (current one being a Maruszczyk Elwood 4a 32”) but perhaps your yardstick is a humbucker equipped bass?

Bandwidth (not my idea) played at Whitehall Farm in Burnham Thorpe (Nelson’s birthplace) yesterday evening. The place has a camp site, caravan site and glamping, so quite a few punters around. This was a return match after playing there earlier in the year for a classic car day. We knew what to expect, in that the band area is in the front of a converted barn and covered in dust. The audience are largely across the courtyard, where the bar and cafe are situated but about 20 clustered around us on hay bales. I knew things weren’t going to be great amongst us when the lead guitarist had a go at the rhythm guitarist during the set up. He can be pretty grumpy and doesn’t seem to have any filter. Things weren’t helped by the fact it was cold and getting colder (about 12 C when we finished) and we had to play from 6-9. Miraculously we managed to set up in less than an hour (it normally takes longer) but struggled to get the sound balance right. Just to add to the fun, bursitis in my left elbow, which has been coming and going for about a month, had decided to play up and I had a bit of a lump on my left elbow. During the gig this swelled to about the size of an egg. We had been asked to play a dance set, so it was relentlessly fast. Towards the end of set two my left forearm started to cramp up and this spread down to my hand, so much so that I had to play by sliding my index finger up and down the strings as they were all locked rigid. I am sure this was related to the bursitis. Lead guitarist had been giving me and the drummer dirty looks and telling us to speed up already but this triggered a real invective, not said directly to anybody’s face but it was obvious who it was directed at. I recovered a bit during the beer break but it was then back to another relentlessly fast final set. We ended with Gotta Get Out of This Place, which was one of the slower numbers but I was struggling to keep Chas Chandler’s bass riff going, which was made obvious by glances and gee-up gestures. At least the other band members showed concern for me. I came away wondering whether this degree of hassle is worth it for £60! However, the owners are lovely and made sure we got a free drink and our choice of food from the cafe. I probably should have baled at the end of set two but the punters were enjoying it and the show must go on. We did get plenty of positive feedback from the audience, so we can’t have been that slow! Gear wise: Guild Starfire 1 and custom made P/J shorty (long gig axe), Blackstar U700, 2 x LFSys Monzas, Peterson Strobostomp HD. Black suede desert boots (now beige from the dust).

We are waiting to hear what @funkle reckons about his, when it arrives. My personal experience of two Monzas, is that they are completely FRFR and it looks like the Goodwood has been designed with the same parameters, just less power handling. The Monzas reproduce exactly what you put into them with amazing projection and sensitivity. An added bonus is that you can hear yourself, even when close to the cab.

Which reminds me, I was going to do a NBD report on the Hartwood Satellite bass. I will get round to it soon, complete with photos but immediate impressions are favourable. The neck is really good for a budget bass: pretty well what Bass the World’s Gregor said. Good fret finishing, nice roast maple neck, heel wheel truss rod adjustment, even the laurel fret board is OK, although a little dry, which was easily fixed with a some lemon oil. I took it to my local luthier for a new bass inspection and he recut the nut, which was too high and did a few tweaks to truss rod and saddles. It plays great now. It balances OK on a strap, although mine are all grippy, so other mileage might be different. Certainly nothing like as bad as say a Squier Jaguar H. The pickup is a bit odd: less output on the bottom string but strong on the two middle strings (low mids centric like Gregor said). Slightly disappointing, so I have ordered a Tone Rider Duke. More to follow, when I have time to do the NBD report.

Nice but quite steep for what is not much more than an extra 2” on a G2220 neck and a modified body shape. Good to have another reasonably priced medium scale around though.

Ahhhh! I decided to take one for the team and just ordered a Hartwood Satellite from G4M. Couldn’t resist the GAS. I’ve gone for the blue (like the one Bass the World tested). They had a nearly new one for £30 off and I wondered if that was the bass that Bass the World tested. I was tempted, because Gregor said the frets were perfect but I decided to take a risk on this being a Hartwood feature (just jinxed myself) and to get the full 3 year warranty, so ordered a new one. I will let you know what I think of it in due course. I suspect I will end up changing some parts: I can’t resist tinkering with cheap basses. The bridge might not be a straightforward upgrade because it looks like it has only got a mounting screw at each corner, rather than the ubiquitous Fender 5 screw mounting. The pickup might just be swapped for a Tone Rider; possibly a Duke.

Thanks for all the advice folks. Really appreciated. I’ll give @Happy Jack’s warm up routine a go next gig. In the meantime I am applying ice and hoping it improves before the gig. I’m used to having an aching left hand, left shoulder blade and back after a long gig but this was a new one on me. Things don’t get easier with age! 😏

Reviving this topic to ask if anybody has any tips to get rid of fretting arm elbow bursitis? The scenario: yesterday I played for about 5 hours guitar and bass at a jam session the Norfolk Blue Society put on at a local fete. Not a huge number of folks turned up, so I played pretty well non-stop for 5 hours out of the 6 we were there. To show how desperate we were, I actually sang for 30 minutes of the time I wasn’t playing 😱. Anyway, back to the topic: within a couple of hours of finishing, I noticed that my left elbow (I’m right handed) was sensitive to the touch. After another hour or so, a distinct bump had developed just below my elbow and the whole area around my elbow was hot to the touch: classic bursitis symptoms. I didn’t bash it, so I can only assume that the bursitis had been caused by playing for so long. I played guitar for about half of the session, the rest of the time was spent on my very light Greco medium scale bass (ideal for long gigs). I don’t play guitar very much these days and arthritis in the base of my left thumb means that my technique is probably not ideal. Anybody had this; any tips for recovery and is it OK to go on playing in the meantime? I have a gig coming up in 5 days.

I think I would start with one of the new Squier Broncos as the modding platform though. It seems a shame to be doing this to a genuine old Musicmaster but then, in the 70s and 80s it was probably cheap and unloved.

At first I thought the pickups were aligned “by eye”, rather than measurement but then I thought, was it to make the pole pieces more centred on the strings, given the narrow string spacing of the standard bridge? In which case, it was entirely successful!